So, I was returning from Sonic with our foot-long coneys and tots (hey, don’t judge…you know you love ’em, too, especially topped with jalapeños and onions) and as I drove around the curve in front of the clubhouse, something black and tool-like resting in the middle of the street caught my eye. I backed up, open the car door, and retrieved the object.
It was a lock-back razor knife housed in a carabiner-style frame, with swivel-out screwdrivers, one flat and one Phillips. I felt guilty picking it up – what if the owner realizes he lost it and comes looking for it? – but decided to take it home and send out a message on the neighborhood mailing list to see if anyone claimed it. If not, well, finders-keepers and all that.
I put the tool on my workbench and we ate our guilty pleasures* and then I remembered my plan to email a note to the neighborhood. I went into the garage, picked up the tool, and thought, “this looks an awful lot like the one I have, only mine doesn’t have the screwdrivers.” I decided to compare the two, and reached up to the rack where I kept mine handy for all the box cutting work. I reached in vain, as mine was mysteriously missing.
Only then did I realize that the owner of the lost tool was actually me. I had used it earlier in the afternoon to break down a carton so it would fit in the trash, and I laid it on the truck bed rail. I forgot to put it in its rightful place and when I later left for Sonic, it made it about two blocks (and two corners) before falling into the middle of the street, waiting for someone to pick it up. Which I did about twenty minutes later.
There are many morals to this story, chief among them being that hot dogs destroy one’s cognitive abilities; also, you probably don’t know your tools as well as you think. But at least I didn’t have to feel guilty about taking someone else’s lost property.
*Our 25 mile bike ride this morning served as our penance, and believe me, it felt like it.
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Eric, I sometimes run across things in the house that I can’t remember that I bought. I usually think it is something the kids left here or I blame it on my age or having had chemo. You can’t use any of these reasons!
I know; that’s what makes it so bad! (Although the second reason is becoming more credible every day.)
I must confess!! I had a Sonic footlong cheese coney (added mustard and onions) last night. Oh and tator tots too!!! Food of the gods……Yummy!!
Ah…a soulmate! 😉 Your secret is safe with us; the internet is busy elsewhere at this time.
But…no jalapeños?
That’s a great story, Eric.
But if someone else had found it and sent a neighborhood message would you have recognized it as yours?
George, that’s a good question. I probably wouldn’t have, although it might have prompted me to go into the garage just to check. And then – perhaps – I would have realized what I’d done.
The real question is whether anyone else would have actually tried to track down the owner. It’s just a $10 tool, and with all the construction going on out here, stuff is always falling off trucks. Not that I’m claiming any ethical superiority…it’s just easier for me to check with the neighborhood since I administer the mailing list.